It's not your fault.

I am Shawn Liu. I weigh about 145 pounds.
I co-founded Harvest. I update this blog sometimes.
@mrshawnliu

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  Saw this in the latest issue of The New Yorker (The Mail, January 18, 2010):

  James Surowiecki, in writing about Tiger Woods, states that “by most accounts” athletes started endorsing products in 1905, when Honus Wagner put his name on the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Professional and amateur cyclists had been endorsing products for at least a decade before that. In 1894, for example, my great-grandaunt, Annie Kopchovsky, carried a placard advertising Londonderry Lithia Spring Water on the first of two bicycles she used in an around-the-world bicycle trip, and the company used her image in at least one newspaper ad in Denver when she passed through, the following year. Indeed, she travelled under the name Annie Londonderry and also appeared in advertisements for Sterling bicycles, the brand of the second bike she used on the journey. And she wasn’t the only Annie to endorse Sterling cycles: Annie Oakley, the sharpshooter, did as well.

  Peter Zheutlin / Needham, Mass.

  I was curious and consulted with Google. Turned out that Peter Zheutlin wrote a book about his greatgrandaunt, and that book appears to be the only source people refer to on the internet (including the Wikipedia entry for Kopchovsky). The above advertisement is taken from the Annie Londonderry site (set up by Peter Zheutlin).

  17 Jan 2010